Roughriders ready for showdown with Stampeders

Yahoo

6 days ago

It's a battle for top spot in the West Division as the Saskatchewan Roughriders host the Calgary Stampeders on Friday night.
Following their first bye week of the CFL season, the Roughriders enter the Week 6 contest at 4-0 while the Stampeders are 3-1 after beating the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 37-16 last week.
And while it's a long season, the winner of Friday's game — which is set to get underway at 7 p.m. at Mosaic Stadium — will hold down top spot in the division through six weeks.
While Friday's game features the top two running backs in the CFL this year in A.J. Ouellette and Dedrick Mills — who rank No. 1 and 2 in rushing yards respectively — there's also a couple veteran quarterbacks set to go head-to-head.
Trevor Harris will return to the starting role for the Roughriders after sitting out Saskatchewan's Week 4 game over the B.C. Lions as he was in concussion protocol.
While Jake Maier picked up the win in relief of Harris, the 39-year-old pivot wants to keep Saskatchewan's strong start to the season going, although he says what happened last week or the week prior doesn't matter at this point.
'Always resets at zero,' said Harris. 'Assess where we were last week, find ways to sharpen our axe and cut down the next tree.
'One of my favourite quotes is, 'If you gave me four hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend three hours sharpening my axe.' And so it's about just making sure that we're sharp going into the game.'
On the other side, Vernon Adams Jr. has been at the helm for all four of Calgary's games to start the season and remarkably enough, the 32-year-old veteran threw his first touchdown pass of the season last week against the Bombers.
So far this season, Adams has averaged 256 yards passing and 29 yards rushing per game, making him a dual threat the Roughriders need to be aware of.
'He could beat you in a couple different ways,' said Roughriders head coach Corey Mace. 'Over the history coaching against him, he's had games where he's ruined it with his legs and he's had games where he sat in the pocket and delivered.
'Certainly we're going to stick to kind of our game plan, what we see this week, and not putting too much emphasis on trying to eliminate one guy. We're 12 (players), they're 12, we've just got to make sure we do our part.'
Calgary's defence has been a big reason for their strong start to the season and that was on display last week as Derrick Moncrief and Damon Webb — two former Roughriders — each had an interception returned for a touchdown in Calgary's win.
And while they've been able to score on defence, the group has given up a league-low 81 points this season while holding their opponents out of the end zone for a large portion of their first four games, as noted by Harris this week.
'I don't think anybody scored a touchdown in the first three quarters on this defence,' said Harris, whose offence is averaging a league-high 29.3 points per game. 'They make things very difficult on you.
'They don't do 65 different coverages. They play what they play, and they get really, really good at it, and they make things difficult for you.
'And so to some degree, you know what you're going to get. But we also know that they're going to give us looks that we haven't seen before. They're going to keep us guessing and show us a few things that they haven't shown yet this year.
'We're excited about the challenge. They bring a great challenge to us, but we think we bring great challenge to them as well.'
Cornerback Tevaughn Campbell (groin) has been ruled out this week after suffering an injury in Saskatchewan's Week 4 game against the Lions, meaning Antoine Brooks Jr. will likely draw the start this week.
Meanwhile, running back Thomas Bertrand-Hudon (thigh) has also been ruled out which means Ka'Deem Carey will find himself back on the roster backing up Ouellette.
And along the offensive line, with Trevon Tate (shoulder) out, Zack Fry will slot in at left guard for the Green and White, who will still be without receiver Samuel Emilus (foot) for a second consecutive game.
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